Neumann rode the endorsement of the Tea Party Express, an influential political action committee (officially Our Country Deserves Better PAC) with deep pockets, and its subsequent bus tour, hoping to put some distance between himself and the crowded Republican field.

On Wednesday, the closely watch Marquette Law School poll comes out, taking the temperature of Republican voters a week before next Tuesday’s partisan primary.

Along with Tea Party Express, Neumann and Cruz both received large financial support from Club for Growth Action, another conservative PAC. In Texas, Club for Growth spent nearly $5 million opposing Dewhurst and another $606,657 supporting Cruz. In Wisconsin, the PAC has spent at least $220,473 in support of Neumann and another $1 million attacking Hovde and Thompson.

But Hovde picked up an endorsement from FreedomWorks, another small-government, conservative PAC which backed Cruz in Texas. Thompson gained support from hard rocker and guns-rights gurus Ted Nugent, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, among a long list of moderate to conservative Republicans.

In a race where each candidate has tried to out-conservative the other, Neumann has highlighted his fiscal restraint with a story of

Mark Neumann stumping in La Crosse with his pocket Declaration of Independence.

being kicked out of the House Appropriations Committee as a 1st District congressman in the 1990s. He says he defied then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s request for voting on a spending bill.

“And the moment of truth came when Newt Gingrich himself took me aside and looked me in the eye, and he said to me ‘Mark Neumann, you don’t get it. If you don’t vote for this bill, you’re career in politics is over,’” Neumann said.

Gingrich on Tuesday told Wisconsin Reporter he didn’t remember the confrontation. “It doesn’t ring any bells at all,” he said.

Following his confrontation with Gingrich, Neumann told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he would vote for Texas’ Richard Armey, at one time the second-highest ranking Republican House member, to succeed Gingrich as Speaker. Armey is now chairman of FreedomWorks.

It figures that Gingrich would endorse another big govt. progressive since he himself is cut from the same cloth. Gingrich is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which was established by the same group of banksters who run the Federal Reserve. Get the picture, folks? Thompson is one of THEM…not one of US!

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